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It was the critique day and we had all morning until 3pm to work on our portraits if we wanted. So of course I took advantage and worked on it for a couple hours. As I was looking at my portrait I would always ask myself “does it look like me?” which honestly drove me crazy. I think I have looked at it so much I can’t see what I have drawn. I can’t see me anymore. In the beginning I did see certain features that resembled me but honestly I couldn’t see that anymore. I think I was looking to hard.

I want to mention that throughout the whole process the right side of my image I tried to ignore and today was the day I start it. I felt it was harder for me to draw that side because the mirror was on my left and easier to look at while drawing the left side. But with the left I felt like I was making drastic movements to see myself and the draw what I saw.

Again here are the images of my process 🙂

Picture from the day before

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Todays work was mainly completion of the portrait. I was rushing just little because I did want a full face and wanted to see what it would look like and if it would acutely look like me. So the eye on the right is a little of and less detailed as the one on the left. When I was drawing this I felt it was hard to get the right size. The measure for me today wasn’t working and I just kept getting confused and drawing it wrong. I think in total I changed that eye at lease 4 times until I got what I have right now. And when I felt it was good enough I stepped back and didn’t like it at all but it was better then what I did have up there so I was ok.

Today was also the little detail, the small changes to make it look even better and I think I fixed a few things but maybe not enough to make it really look like me. The eyebrows I tried to draw but I think they were still a little dark but I liked the way they turned out in the end.

It was also the critique and everybody’s were yet again was great. I think everybody worked really hard on trying to complete what they can in such little time it was great. Every body had different ways of how they went on the complete their faces by starting with the eyes or mouth it was all the same outcome of great work. For each persons own work you felt they cared about the drawing and really wanted to try and get the image of what they saw down.

So from the images you can see what today was all about. If you see it I’m still going to tell you :). So the most drastic addition is I now have an eye. I tried so hard to avoid drawing the eye! I just felt like it was going to be so difficult I won’t be able to do it so I just ignored it until I HAD to do it. But before I did that I completed my chin and the bottom of my face. I wanted to see what it looked like if I drew the outline of my face. I did use the measure and angles technique but I felt my brain was really telling me what the shape of my chin was that is what was put down on image.

The eye wasn’t as bad as I thought but still was tricky. I had to make sure I had it in the correct position and that the size was correct. I started and it was a little small and when I made it bigger I felt it was too big. I tried making it a little smaller and got it to a size I felt was correct.

I had taken photos with my cell phone and went home and found my self looking at the picture and saw something that wasn’t right. I could find exactly what needed to be changed but stayed looking at it and talked about it to my grandmother until she saw that my pupil needed to be a little bigger. After that I couldn’t wait to get to the studio to go fix it and was excited to see what that little change would make the image look like.

Today was another work day for our self portraits. It was also the last day of class 😦 . I know a few of us in the class were shocked it is almost over. It has gone past really fast but have enjoyed and learned so much from this class and will allow me to look at things from a different point of view.

Today I worked on my lips. I fixed the problem 🙂 What I basically did is rub out (or darken) the lips and start again. I didn’t what to rub out all of what I did so I rubbed out small areas fixed them and went on like that until it was fixed. What was wrong was the size of my bottom lip was incorrect and my top lip. The widths were larger then they were. I think that is what I thought my lips looked like or what I wished my lips width was :p – at least I know what it would look like if I every got them done.

I also guessed the position of my eyes which was incorrect. So I darkened the spot were I thought I was going to place my eye and found the correct place.

Today was the day we really started working on our portraits. I was a little excited but kind of intimidated because I knew what it was supposed to look like when I was done. There were pervious classes of the portraits up on the wall as examples for what we ours should kind of end up like.

We started on thursday with the center of the page which was were our nose was going to go. Thursday I have to say was a terrible day for this project. I didn’t get any of what we were supposed to do. I couldn’t stop looking at my nose as a nose and just draw a shape. So I left the studio a little frustrated and wasn’t looking forward to this project.

Monday came and it was go time and the first 10-20 minutes I was still a little lost but then I got into it. I started to look at my nose and draw the shades and then connected the shades shapes together. We had to use the string technique with the portrait so we could get the proportions correct. This turned out to be VERY difficult because as I was looking into the mirror I would get lost and confused about which string I measure. Is it the string in the reflection of the actual string.

Bellow is a set of photos of my progress today.

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

As I stood back from my portrait I did notice something was wrong with my lips but wasn’t sure. I measured using the string and I thought it was what I saw but still something was wrong in my measurements. I left it at that for the day because I felt pretty comfortable for my first day of work :).

After everything looked pretty we had to get down to the drawing part. I have to say it bugged the crap out of me! It drove me crazy because I could not get anything down. We were supposed to use a netted eraser to draw our portraits. The one good thing about this technique of drawing if we don’t like what we have erased we can re apply the charcole and start over.

We started with the drawing the center of our nose and positioning it on the center of the page. Our portrait is supposed to four times the size we see in the mirror. We are also using the string technique for the proportion sizes.

During this session I could not do anything because I was seeing a nose and my brain was telling me what I was supposed to see and draw.

Can you see my nose? I can’t

I would look into the mirror focus real hard on my nose and saw the shadows on my nose and started erasing but then I would look back at into my mirror and I would see my eyes and my brain would tell me again its a face and tell me what I saw and I couldn’t draw what I was actually seeing.

I didn’t work on int much longer because it was really driving me crazy.

I let you know how it goes and I will be taking photos of my progress 🙂

Well followers this is our final project :(. I am a little sad that its almost all over because I have really enjoyed this class and art in general.

My Spot

For our final project we have to create a self portrait. But the method to do this isn’t just drawing it is erasing, the hard part. What we needed to get done first is set up our area of where we want to set and set the ezil up and our mirror, because that is how we are going to draw our selves is from our reflection.

As you can see from the image bellow I had to tap my chair in the same position so it did not move as I got up from my chair and drawing. We had to set up our mirrors and light fixtures until it felt comfortable to us and it was set in the position where I could see my self with a little dramatic light.

I had to tap my chair to the floor to minimize any movement

The area

After we set up our little areas we then set off to get our paper we were going to erase on ready. To do that meant to make a big mess which I of course enjoyed! We took pieces of charcole that was provided by the professor and on a ‘pallet’ grind it up until it was fine tiny pieces. To do that we just took our charcole and made marks on our pallet which was just a smaller piece of paper from what we were going to use for our portraits.

Here it is! My charcole mess. This what I am going to erase on

After did that we took toilet paper, which was going to be our applicator, and wipe the find charcole dust on the toilet paper and slowly and even and as dark as we can onto the large piece of paper. This took a very long time to do I have to say. It was fun in the beginning but as time went on I just wanted to be done with it. I also think the fine dust was getting to my because I did sneeze a few times.

Critique Day!! thought words always make me nervous. Today we sat down and were critiquing each others summer valentines. I really enjoyed hearing about people ideas and seeing the final out come. Unlike mine theres was more complete. I drove that day to class thinking what else can be done to the word ‘YOU’. I tried it on a different type of paper but it didn’t fit and look right at all. I then did try it on regular white drawing paper, but that wasn’t the write paper. I didn’t have the time and ability to go out and look for paper because I did work on this later at night so I stuck with what I had and tried to complete it the night before.

I tried it out on a magazine page.

The one thing I did change from my original idea was to write out part of my letter ‘YOU’ in arabic. Because it is for me and I do speak arabic and english it could bring out that part of me in my work. If you look closely to the images you can the the ‘Y’ has arabic hand writing on it and all it says is the same things in the english, which are words that describe me, in arabic. For the english words I chose I thought it would be nice if this were to be given to me by a loved one it would be a nice for me to see how these things they wrote would remind them of me. Things like Chipotle and Ice-cream are in the outline of the word you.

So during the critique I wasn’t really impressed at what I had. I was just a plain piece of paper with the letter ‘YOU’. Just like the image above just on a white sheet of paper. I did not take a photograph of it because I wasn’t impressed or happy with it. I had also forgotten half at home. I had a top sheet of paper cut out in little circles that I wanted to place on top if my word you. The tiny cut out was for the LOVE that you could see in the ‘O’ of the word ‘YOU. I went home that night with ideas from my classmates and professor on how I could improve it. They told me I could do the magazine idea but with my image in the background instead of a model. This would make it more personal to me because it was my image in the background. Or I could draw this out on different color paper and try different sizes. I liked there ideas but what I really wanted it to be was simple but very me.

I got home and had bought card stock, which was just plane white cards. I though about cutting out my ‘YOU’ and glueing it to the inside of the card.

Closed Card

I tried it and didn’t look really good. I then tried the cut out on different colored papers and picked blue because it made the blue colored handwriting in the ‘O’ kind of lighter and made the red pop more. So I stuck with that and glue it all to the inside of the card. I then cut out the front of the card so you could only see two things, the ‘I’ and the ‘Love’. So as you opened looked and the card you read in your mind, I Love. Then when you opened the card up you saw the you and read I love you.

Open Card

Zoom in on the word ‘YOU’

Even though I didn’t not complete it in time for the critique I think it turned out pretty well. I do not know why I could not get a fixed idea in my head about what to do.